Contemplation of the Sublime

Confrontation, contemplation, the yielding of one's self to what is beheld. An alarming, piercing reality. A sense of suspension. The vertiginous falling into the world. The trance-like experience of immersion, submersion. Solitude, tranquility, isolation. Many of the actors in Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass performed under hypnosis, amplifying the oneiric atmosphere. The hallucinatory lucidity that lies slightly askance of the quotidian. How many degrees must one move to enter this realm, the everyday surreal sublime? What must shift for things to enter the pleasing unease? To allow one's self to suddenly fall, tumbling through the pane into the otherworldly realm that lies nearby, or within.



"Strange! So infinitesimally narrow is the threshold between the two realms, and yet no one raises their foot to cross it! The other reality borders on our skin, yet we do not feel it! Our imagination stops here, where it could create new land."

Gustav Meyrink, The White Dominican, 1921